Organizations perform operations, transactions, and business processes both within their own organization as well as across company boundaries, such as by conducting business with external entities such as business partners, distribution centers, outsourcing companies, compliance auditors, banks, and logistics providers Many business models have evolved from single enterprise business models into inter-connected and networked business models. During the course of execution, business processes record their operations in a process log. Individual process participants, entities, and users can review the process log to determine the effectiveness and success of various operations of the executed business processes.
Business process modeling notation (BPMN) is a standard for business process modeling, and can be used to design and create detailed business processes in a form generally understandable to individuals of different technical knowledge and ability. In general, the objective of BPMN is to support business process management for both technical users and business users by providing a notation that is intuitive to business users, yet capable of representing complex process semantics. Further, the BPMN specification can be used with Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) engines to provide mappings between the graphics of the notation to the underlying constructs of execution languages. In other instances, BPMN-based process execution runtimes may be used to interpret, process, and understand BPMN. Because BPMN is understandable by both technical and business users, networked business processes can be described using BPMN, providing a common point of understanding for users from different entities. The BPMN-designed business process can be associated with a logging mechanism or module in order to record the operations of the system and/or any human interactions at runtime in either the development or production runtime environment.